Wolfwood: The Sermons
by C M Forde
Summary: As night falls on Nicholas D Wolfwood, his actions haunt the tattered vestiges of his mind. His days as an assassin come into clarity as the twilight of his life ebbs towards night.
1. Darkness

Wolfwood

Sermon One: Darkness

By

C M Forde

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The sun set complacently upon the seemingly endless desert sands, no creatures stirring up the dust with their paws. Everything was silent, a deathly pale that sucked out at the ends of life, promising nothing but darkness to come. Gunsmoke was not a planet for the pure, and it held no place in its heart for innocence or grace. To survive here, one had to be tainted, had to be false and deceptive, that was the grim reality. The very essence of this fact stood upon one of the many dunes, staring out at the fading light to the west, a thin line of smoke trailing from the end of a crooked cigarette. In his whole life he had met but three people who he could truly call innocent, could think of only three people in the world who had lived their lives without taint. One of these was a man who had destroyed an entire city, murdered hundreds in cold blood; and another was a woman he had betrayed, had tainted himself for his own selfish ends. The third he could not touch, she was not his, and was beyond his grasp. These three people are what flooded the man's mind as he watched the dying light of the desert sky, these three people he had failed in death as much as in life. His name was Nicholas D Wolfwood, the priest, the killer, the friend, the lover. 

  
  
  
  


The gunshot rang out in the house, awakening the children from their peaceful slumbers. There was a scream from upstairs, female and frightened, a wail of grief and terror, but it only lasted a moment before a second shot silenced it as well. As the children went up the stairs Wolfwood walked down, lighting a cigarette casually as he passed them by. It was getting too easy these days, to simple to just pull the trigger and be done with it all. He had never really thought much about life or death, the idea of being a priest only an amusing side note to his blood stained life, but it used to be hard for him, every face etched permanently into his mind before a shaking hand could pull the trigger, not anymore. People were nothing more than targets, paper thin entities that he shot as easily as he tied his shoes. Regret was a thing of the past, a thing he did not miss.

Stepping out of the door and into the night, a feminine voice greeted him from the shadows. "It's like you don't even have to try anymore Nick."

He laughed, "I don't. They just line up for the slaughter, they're really getting pathetic." The priest turned as the woman stepped out of the shadows, blonde hair hanging about her shoulders and blue eyes catching the moonlight. "What are you doing here anyway Vanessa?"

The woman smiled, "Just watching you work, seeing if I might actually have to worry about you being competition."

"Well, what do you think? Am I even in your league yet?" He laughed again as his cigarette lit up his face. The priest was young, no more than nineteen, and his youthful features seemed to reflect his carefree personality.

"Nope, you're still way behind me." The woman seemed just a little older than he, mid twenties at most, and she shared his easy going outlook. It seemed as the two of them had known each other for a long time, friends obviously, maybe even lovers. "What was this one about anyway? He forget to pay his gambling debts?"

Wolfwood shook his head, "He was just a spider. A predator that needed to be eliminated before he could harm the innocent." He shakes his head as if in disbelief, "That's what they tell me anyway. I think it's a whole lot of crap. I try not to ask questions like 'why', I just do my job."

The woman nods, "And his wife?"

At this Wolfwood laughed once more, the easy laugh of a man speaking about his job, "She seemed like she really loved her husband. I figured it would be merciful to send her to the good lord along with her husband, it would be a tragedy to separate them."

A smirk crosses the woman's features, "Well what about the children? Isn't it a cruel thing to do, leaving them without their parents? Maybe you should have sent them on their way to see God as well."

At this Wolfwood spun in the darkness, a pistol in his hands suddenly pressed against the woman's forehead. She didn't have time to speak before the cold steel was against her skin, and in the red glow of his cigarette the priest's eyes burned like fire. "I swear to God Vanessa, if you ever say something like that again I'll drive a bullet through your skull, do you hear me?"

She nodded, her back quivering tightly in the night air, "Jesus Nick, yeah I hear you. Get a grip, it was only a joke."

The preist's gun didn't move, his eyes didn't change, "That's no joke Vanessa. I'm telling you right now that it's not a joke." His finger tensed on the trigger, but he didn't pull, and after a long moment he lowered the gun again. "I'm done here. How about the two of us go find a nice warm bed?"

The woman smiled again, "I'll never understand you Nick, you've got more mood swings than a pregnant woman. First you want to kill me, then you want to screw me. I'm getting a little confused."

He turned and took her into his arms, looking down at her with a roguish smile, "I thought that's why you liked me Vanessa, I'm unpredictable." And then they kissed, Wolfwood's cigarette falling from his lips to the ground, snuffing out the last light of the night, and sinking the world once again into darkness.


	2. The Shadow Of God

Wolfwood:

Sermon Two: The Shadow of God

By

C M Forde

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Through the dimly lit window he could see the two women cooking dinner, steam rising from a pot on the stove like an evening mist coming over a vat expanse of forest. A sight that Wolfwood had never seen, would never see, none of them would. No matter how hard one dreamed, or how much one hoped, the growth wouldn't happen in their lifetime, if it happened at all. Personally, Wolfwood was convinced that it was impossible, the sands of this planet had been too long soaked in blood and tears to nurture the purity of plants. No, the only plants that this barren world would allow were the kind that walked and talked, the kind that killed and destroyed, the kind like Knives. Even through the dirty pane of glass Wolfwood could see his old master tightly rolled in bed sheets that were soaked with blood. The priest began to turn away, content in his passing glance at the life he had forsaken, when a familiar voice called to him from the darkness. "Why don't you come inside? Dinner's waiting for us." Vash the Stampede stood a few yards away, crimson coat whipping in a wind that seemed to rise up just for him. The priest just laughed, a soulless, joyless laugh, and walked away.

  
  
  
  


Everything was silent that night, only the rhythmic beating of his heart, and the soft breath of the woman beside him telling him that he was still alive. The ceiling of the hotel room was nothing spectacular, the same adobe that so many of the buildings in this town were made of, pale red with clean lines and smooth corners, nothing spectacular about it at all. But strangely, he found himself staring at it, he couldn't draw his eyes away, though it was as if he was staring past it, up into the heavens beyond and farther, to the endless depths of reality and more. 

Vanessa stirred beside him and pushed her head under his chin, obligingly the priest's hand curled around her shoulder, fingers intertwining in her golden locks as he stared bleakly at the expanse of nothing he saw. Oblivion watched him from above, and it was a welcome voyeur, less demanding than any God, less intrusive than any devil. It was just an abyss, a dark void where nothing existed. Maybe he was staring up at the shadow of God, an all encompassing darkness blotting out the vestiges of a divinity. He couldn't tell, religion and philosophy had never really been his style. Vanessa moved under him, "Nick, are you awake?"

"Yeah." He was always awake, he couldn't remember the last time he had truly slept. Every tiny noise woke him, every rustle of the curtains, ever shift of the wind at his window was someone coming to take him to hell. It didn't bother him, he had lived with it for so long that the thought that it could be any different was as impossible as changing it.

The woman pressed her head into his chest, "What's wrong?" It was an easy question, simple as any that could be asked. What was keeping him up tonight? But Vanessa didn't have his problem, she was clean in her own mind. No one would come to harm her, no one would want to. At this thought Wolfwood smiled.

"Nothing, you wouldn't understand." His hand moved to caress her shoulder, trying to ease her back into slumber. He liked to be left alone during his contemplations. "Just go back to sleep Vanessa."

The woman frowned and shifted to look up into his face, hidden in the shadowy confines of the room. Even the window provided no light from outside, it was truly dark inside the room and out, they were as alone as they could be, private in the cold caress of the night. "Are you sure? Sometimes it helps to talk about things like this."

He laughed, "You don't understand at all. Just go back to sleep, I'm fine." They had had this conversation before, on the first night they had spent together. Vanessa had tried to get him to open up, to unlock the cage of his feelings, but he had kept her away as surely as he was doing now. Instead of trying to argue, the blonde just sighed and closed her eyes again, using the priest's chest as a pillow. On that note the night closed off, an empty slumber in a dark bed. A sleeping beauty and a wakeful priest. Two angels of death, wingless and earthbound. Wolfwood smiled.


	3. Upon The Cross

Wolfwood:

Sermon Three: Upon the Cross

By

C M Forde

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


He crested the hill to look down upon the valley where he had been laid to rest, as it were. No one had seen the body, because there wasn't one to see. Vash had given him that at least, the right to disappear if he wanted to, the right to leave. But things weren't the way he had expected them, he had wanted to start over, to be an anonymous person in an anonymous town as the man in red had once done. But the farther away from his time with them he got, the more he realized the truth behind his actions. He was running away, away from people he couldn't bring himself to face again, the people he had loved and hated at the same time. His friends. His only friends. As the sun rose in the morning hours its light reflected off of metal in the sand, he was surprised it was still there, though it would have to be a determined thief to steal that gravestone. Upright in the sands stood a monument to who he had been, a stainless cross that bore the weight of a hundred lives on its weighted arms. The priest turned his back, and moved on.

  
  
  
  


It was heavy, much heavier than he had expected, but the weight made it all the easier to carry. The staccato beat of the gunfire matched that of his heart, steel and blood in one movement, life and death. Shell casing littered the ground around his feet, blood filled his veins, and screams could be heard over the roar of the gun, first many, then few. Wolfwood lowered the cross and looked at what was left of the town square, piles of rubble that had once been walls or statues, and bodies, more than he could count. Women and men lay where they had fallen, looks of fear forever etched upon their faces, the ones that still had faces. The priest lowered the cross as it slammed closed again, hiding its murderous identity from the outside world. This had been a job well done.

From an alley to his right, Vanessa came forward wiping her hands, "Don't you think you kinda over did it Nick?" She looked past him at the death in the square and shook her head, "There was only one target."

Wolfwood turned to her with a smile, "They were obviously trying to protect him. It's not my fault if they got in the way."

She shook her head, "All martyrs for the lord right?"

Wolfwood shrugged and hefted the cross over his shoulder casually, "Those who give their lives for the greater good will always join our lord in heaven." As he started to walk away he heard a faint sound from the square, and quiet whine that stopped him in mid step. He knew that sound, that forlorn sadness of loss and pain, the final sounds at the end of innocence. Wolfwood turned his head and saw the child crouched over the body of his mother, weeping the last tears of his childhood upon her unmoving brow. Wolfwood couldn't move, he could barely breathe as he watched the child mourn the death of his mother. Vanessa put her hand on his shoulder to try and comfort him, but he didn't notice, his entire being was locked upon the sight of this child.

The boy looked up at him, eyes streaming a thousand tears, "I hate you! Why did you kill her? Why?" The priest had no answer. The child turned to one of the men, perhaps it had been the sheriff, though his badge would be hidden under the constant flow of blood from all around him, and the child withdrew a pistol from the man's belt. Still, the priest had no answer. "You! I'll kill you! Do you hear me? I'll kill you!" The pistol was raised, and Wolfwood couldn't move, he just stared down the barrel of the gun and saw his fate, realized his judgement. 

"Nick!" The shot was fired, but he didn't feel the pain, just a heavy pressure from his side before he hit the ground. The dirt on his cheek brought his attenion back to reality, and he saw the child still holding the gun, barrel smoking like one of the cigarettes that the priest was so often lighting. He could see himself in the child for that moment, could see the future ahead of this boy, and it pained him deeper than any gunshot could. He would have gladly died for that boy, if he could have saved his soul, if he could have kept him from the path before him, but something in the next moment changed that. Vanessa's voice, "Dammit Nick..." The priest turned to see the blonde laying next to him, a puddle of blood seeping from under her as she tried to regain her feet, clutching at a wound in her side. She had taken the bullet for him, she who had been innocent of this crime, had been willing to sacrifice her life for a murderer. The cross came open again, and the boy joined his mother.


	4. A Lament For Judas

Wolfwood:

Sermon Four: A Lament For Judas

By

C M Forde

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


She was hanging up laundry, the wispy yards of cloth catching the wind and dancing upon its influence like the beat of angel's wings. Did he love her? Did it matter? The priest watched her from the shadows of the overhang, remembering her touch and the sensations that she left on his skin. But that was gone now, and he didn't regret it. He had used her as much as he himself had been used, only he had gone through that willingly, he had always had a choice in his actions. "She misses you." Vash the Stampede was standing behind him, whenever he came into town it seemed like the man in the deep red coat would be there to try and drag him back into the life he didn't deserve. Wolfwood said nothing as he watched her chestnut tresses catch the light and threaten to take up their own steps in the dance that the clothesline had begun. He turned to his once friend, and seemed about to speak, but the other man already understood. Some sins, can not be confessed.

  
  


The cross was bound now in canvas, a strange twin to Vanessa, who's bandages tightened around her body to keep her from falling victim to the child's final vengeance against his mother's killer. The wound had not been bad, and Wolfwood had been able to treat it well enough on his own, her life was not in danger. "Why do you love me?" While Vanessa was wrapped to give proof to her sins, the cross was covered to hide its own from the world. Reflective steel and stainless finish were kept tightly bound and driven from sight so that none would recognize the atrocities it had committed.

Wolfwood's cigarette burned low, "What do you mean?"

Vanessa looked up at him as they walked through the desert, alone and separate, their only companions the darkness that seemed to swallow the stars. "C'mon Nick, I know it's true. You would never hurt a kid, not for anything, but when you saw me hurt, you chose me over him. You love me, I want to know why."

The priest frowned, had that been what he had done? Had he chosen her over the child? Or had he merely seen himself in those young eyes and tainted features? Had he witnessed himself in the ages to come, seen the man the boy would become, and hated him for it? "He had it coming." Some things he couldn't explain, not even to himself. Was it love or hate that had driven him to commit that act? Was his driving force not life, but death? The answers lurked just beneath the surface of what he couldn't comprehend, and the questions dug into his soul, gnawing at him like vicious predators of the night. "You would've done the same for me."

"Of course I would have Nick, I love you."

The priest faltered in his step and the cross weighed down upon his back like a thousand souls aching for forgiveness. "No." He turned to her, shocked, ashamed, angry and afraid all at once. "No you don't." His heart plummeted through his body and came to a rest, small and cold upon his future grave, unmarked, and untended. "Don't you ever say that Vanessa, you don't know what you're talking about."

The woman laughed and leaned against him, her head on his shoulder, "I do love you Nick, that's unquestionable. And now I know that you love me too, and everything will be alright for us." Her body was warm against his, but her words sent glacier chills through his being. He broke away from her, pushed her off of him and stood away from her, aghast and trembling.

"No! Shut up! You can't love me, no!" But she didn't run from him, she didn't look fearful or pleading. She just saw him for who he was. The woman took a step forward and Wolfwood felt like running, running as far from her as he could, wether to save her from damnation or himself from redemption he couldn't be sure. But he didn't move, and she came to him in the all encompassing emptiness of the night and held him in her arms. For the first time in his life the priest knew love. From a woman he had killed for, from a woman who would kill for him. That night two devils lay in the sand, playing at being angels, spreading their wings and pretending that their feathers had not all rotted away.


	5. Thirty Pieces of Silver

Wolfwood:

Sermon Five: Thirty Pieces of Silver

By

C M Forde

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The night was cold, but he didn't think about it, it fit the ambience of his intentions anyway, soulless and apart. Frigid to the touch and less than human. They were all gone for the night, some celebration party that he didn't understand or care to. Celebration was no longer in his memory, joy had been burned out of his soul long before the moon had risen this night, the scarred moon that the man in red had marred through his own grace. That moon was a testament to one man's mercy, and another's black heart. He looked down at the slumbering Knives, still unconscious from the battle he fought with his brother so many weeks ago. The man who had brought more pain into the world than even the priest could claim, and still they had forgiven him. That he couldn't understand, he couldn't accept. But the priest had his own mercy to bestow, it came quickly, Knives didn't even have time to scream.

  
  


The sun was a hindrance, heat washing over them in waves that drew the moisture from their bodies like a thief without remorse. Sweat soaked brows were washed clean by the wind that tore past their faces, dark sunglasses protecting hidden eyes from the lashing of the sand. "The man in red, Vash the Stampede, we're really going after the Humanoid Typhoon?" Vanessa's arms gripped tightly around his waist as the pushed the motorcycle's engine a little harder, hoping to make the next town by dusk.

"That's what he said." When he opened his mouth it was instantly dried by the dirt that tossed through the air, he could barely breathe. Behind Vanessa was the cross, the cross he had promised to give up after this last mission. The cross that carried more lives upon its history than anyone could imagine; carried more sin on its gleaming surface than any thirty pieces of silver. It was the cross that would haunt him for the rest of his days, one that he knew now he could never give up. "Why, are you worried?"

Vanessa laughed, "Why should I be worried? I've got you with me, you're invincible."

The words stung like embers of a fire that had popped from the earth onto his bare skin. He went to her for warmth, but when he got too close he always found pain. Invincible, how many times had he stepped into the fray, heedless of his life? How many times had he hoped that one of the bullets they fired was meant for him? But it was true, he was invincible. So many had tried, and so many had failed, it made the world itself seem too far gone from him. This was his path in life, to murder unpunished. Or perhaps this man in red would finally send him down into hell, would bring justice to all of the victims the priest had claimed.

"What are you thinking about Nick?" Her voice fought the wind to come to him, and though torn away it still sounded weakly in his ears.

He smiled, "The sixty billion double dollars. Can you imagine what we could do with that kind of money?" He couldn't, the priest was unable to bring himself that far into the world of hope. When they collected the money he would have let Vanessa do with it as she pleased, most likely using it to fix up that orphanage she had established. He had visited once or twice, watching the children play and sometimes joining in, though every face made him think of that child. That child that could have been him. That child that would have killed him had he had the chance, the one that the priest now wished had not missed. But the world was an unforgiving place, and he was an unforgiving man.

"I think I'd buy a sand steamer, that way we won't have to ride around on your crusty old bike anymore."

"Hey, let's stop for a second alright? The man in red would have to wait for a while, there were other things that had to be done as well. Things that sapped at the last supports of Wolfwood's soul.

"Alright, what's up Nick?"

He slowed the bike to a stop and waited for Vanessa to get off before he let it fall the ground, cross tumbling across the sands, marring their serene surface. When he turned to her he pulled off his sunglasses, his eyes catching the midday sunlight in a wet flicker that could have been a tear. "Vanessa listen... There's something you need to hear."

The woman smiled and rested her hands on her hips, confident and beautiful as she had always been. "This isn't really like you Nick. What's on your mind?"

He could remember that night when she had been shot, how she had felt in his arms after she confessed her love, the surety in her face when she had spoken. That's how he remembered her, stars dancing in her eyes, his own reflection staring back at him as if caught in a prison of sapphire that he could never escape from. It had scared him then, but it comforted him now, to know that in those eyes he was safe and forgiven, loved. How long ago had that been? Five years? Ten? He no longer remembered, no longer cared or counted. Time was nothing to a man who sought only eternity. "I love you."

Vanessa took a step forward, clasping the priest's hand in her own, "Nick... You know how I feel, and I've known how you felt for years. You didn't have to stop to tell me that. Now come on, let's get back on the road, we have a job to do." The priest said nothing, he only looked at her, the devil that would deliver him to heaven if she could, and he cried.


	6. Redemption

Wolfwood:

Sermon Six: Redemption

By

C M Forde

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


As the sun eased its way above the horizon there was nothing left, the world was a bleak expanse of endless desert stretching out before him, a hopeless length of dust and loneliness that stretched on forever, with no end and no chance for peace. The heavy winds blew the sand around in a wild frenzy, disturbing the tranquility that was the only solace of the dry expanse, the only beauty this world allowed. "Mr. Wolfwood?" The words burned their way into his ears and he wanted to force them out any way he could. How had she found him? It wasn't fair, not to him, not to her. He couldn't be who she wanted him to be, "You did it didn't you? You killed Knives." He was silent, his silence saying everything that he couldn't. An apology, an explanation, none of them could be forced from his dry throat. He didn't deserve a second chance, he wouldn't taint her with more lies, she didn't deserve that. Warm arms embraced him tightly and he couldn't breath. Tear filled eyes locked onto his and he couldn't speak. "Mr. Wolfwood please... Don't leave me again." Sometimes, in the still of the morning, as dawn breaks into the new day, redemption can be given without thought or consequence. Sometimes, there is love.

  
  


Sweat poured down his face as he sat silently beneath the sun, watching the distance be still and quiet. He couldn't tell wether the moisture on his cheeks was the sweat or the tears anymore, and he didn't much care. His life should have ended a long time ago. It should have ended when that boy pulled the trigger, it should have ended even before that. He should have never met Vanessa, never met Knives or The Priest. His whole life had been filled with choices that he should have made differently, paths that he chose not to take. But the past was over, and he would have to live with his own mistakes until someone made him die for them.

On cold night sometimes, he could remember the gun in his mouth, the cold steel between his teeth with the single chambered round ready to explode from the barrel and put an end to the sinning, but it never did. He couldn't do it, he was a coward. So he did what he could to give others the chance to finish what he couldn't. But instead of relieving him of his sins, they just became a heavier burden he had to carry with that cross.

The cross, even now it pressed down upon his back, threatening to crush him under the weight of the lives it had stolen, that he had stolen. He wished it would, that it would force him to sink down into the sand and disappear forever, to never been known of again. Who would miss him? Not Knives. And Vanessa? He tried not to think about Vanessa, about the things she had tried to give to him but that he had shunned. She had been his chance at redemption, she had been the only hope left in his empty void, but even then she had been what hurt the most.

Everything about Vanessa had been an affront to his sins, a man like him couldn't be loved, not after what he had gone through. Not after what he had done. He didn't deserve her love, no matter how much he cherished it. No one should love a man whose life was nothing but death without consequence or remorse, though she had truly been no better than he. Her sins didn't weigh so heavily upon her, she was a devil in the deepest sense, but he loved her just the same. 

Maybe that was why he loved her, because she was a companion to his darkness. But he didn't think so, he believed that he loved her because she was so different than he, not because she was so alike. She lived apart from reality, she lived where sins didn't matter, where life was nothing but a game to play. She didn't see his sins because she didn't believe in them. That she could kill in one moment, and care for the children in the next. That was why he loved her, because she was everything he couldn't be, and because she saw the good in him that didn't exist.

The tears were mixing with the sweat again, but he didn't dare wipe them away, she wouldn't have. In the far distance he watched a bus weaving its way through the sands, a pillar of dust floating up behind it to mark its travels for al of eternity. On this bus was the man in red, Vash the Stampede, the man whose life was in the priest's hands. The man whose sins far outstretched his own. They would spot him, he was sure of it, and even as he thought it the bus turned and started heading towards him. Maybe this was the man who would finally bring the sinning to an end. He dearly hoped so.

Footprints stretched out into the distance behind Wolfwood, back far beyond the horizon where the sun went down every night to sleep, casting the world in darkness once more. There at the end of those footprints, was a motorcycle, turned over on its side, forgotten as the sand slowly began to cover it up. And next to it was the body of a woman, blonde hair stained red with blood. Her face seemed infinitely sad as it stared up at the empty sky. Her name had been Vanessa, and she had once loved a priest who didn't believe in love.


End file.
